Multiple measurements of gravitational waves acting as standard probes: model-independent constraints on the cosmic curvature with DECIGO

TL;DR

This paper explores how future space-based gravitational wave detectors like DECIGO can independently measure cosmic curvature at high redshifts, providing constraints comparable to electromagnetic methods and enabling evolution studies of curvature.

Contribution

It introduces a model-independent approach using gravitational wave measurements from DECIGO to constrain and reconstruct the cosmic curvature across different redshifts.

Findings

DECIGO can constrain $\Omega_k$ with a precision of 0.12.

Constraints are comparable to electromagnetic methods like Pantheon SNe Ia.

The method allows exploration of curvature evolution up to redshift z~5.

Abstract

Although the spatial curvature has been precisely determined via the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observation by Planck satellite, it still suffers from the well-known cosmic curvature tension. As a standard siren, gravitational waves (GWs) from binary neutron star mergers provide a direct way to measure the luminosity distance. In addition, the accelerating expansion of the universe may cause an additional phase shift in the gravitational waveform, which allows us to measure the acceleration parameter. This measurement provides an important opportunity to determine the curvature parameter $\Omega_k$ in the GW domain based on the combination of two different observables for the same objects at high redshifts. In this study, we investigate how such an idea could be implemented with future generation of space-based DECi-hertz Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (DECIGO) in the framework of two model-independent methods. Our results show that DECIGO could provide a reliable and stringent constraint on the cosmic curvature at a precision of $\Delta\Omega_k$=0.12, which is comparable to existing results based on different electromagnetic data. Our constraints are more stringent than the traditional electromagnetic method from the Pantheon SNe Ia sample, which shows no evidence for the deviation from the flat universe at $z\sim 2.3$. More importantly, with our model-independent method, such a second-generation space-based GW detector would also be able to explore the possible evolution $\Omega_k$ with redshifts, through direct measurements of cosmic curvature at different redshifts ($z\sim 5$). Such a model-independent $\Omega_k$ reconstruction to the distance past can become a milestone in gravitational-wave cosmology.